Marathon 2 #08 Nuke and Pave (testing new bump maps, monster health display, & more), 2023-02-28

Rather than make separate videos for each minor project I’m currently messing around with, I decided to combine them all in rendering this film I made of “Nuke and Pave” yesterday.
- AI-generated parallax maps
Aleph One developer Trajan’s Row mentioned a relatively new machine learning algorithm for generating parallax maps called DeepBump (github.com/Hug...) that, naturally, I had to try out. I used the XBLA textures as a testing ground, and I find the results quite impressive. There are a few minor flaws (notably, the switches and rechargers don’t keep constant height between their “on” and “off” states), but I have Ideas™ about how to fix them.
I’ll release these formally when I’m satisfied with them, but for now, you can find prototypes at cdn.discordapp.... (The textures here are Freeverse’s work, and many of the glow maps are from thedoctor45’s Graphics SuperPlugin, which has contributions from Hopper, Treellama, TheDoc45, General Tacticus, J2k, Spurious Interrupt, Tfear7, and Zetren. A few water textures’ parallax maps are also taken from said plugin, which curiously had parallax maps for a few textures, but nowhere near the whole set.)
- Monster health display
aperturegrillz made the original script, displaying some phenomenal understanding of trigonometry that I couldn’t begin to grasp nowadays. Another cool feature is that it plays a “crunch” sound when the player lands a running fist punch, which makes playing fists-only way more satisfying than it should be. My only change to the monster health script, besides refactoring it to work with the other scripts, was fixing a few bugs. This has not yet been formally released.
- BRUTAL MARATHON
It’s BRUTAL MARATHON. What more could you want?
- Various additional display functionality
At the top of the screen, from left to right, we have:
(1) time elapsed in game (or, briefly after clearing a level, the time spent on the previous one)
(2) total damage dealt to player’s foes since start of level
(3) total number of player’s foes still surviving
(4) total number of player’s foes killed since start of level
(5) what the player is looking at, including its ID within the engine (often extremely useful for debugging purposes)
Since Aleph One currently does not allow multiple solo Lua scripts to run at once, I’ve combined the last three of these (and more) into one mega-script. This was surprisingly convoluted, but I did get it to work.
- Stereo sound remixes
I’ve remixed Marathon’s sounds from their stereo sources where we’ve been able to locate them (Sound Ideas’ General Series 6000, with only a single exception). My current (or nearly current) revisions are available at cdn.discordapp.... I’ll release these more formally when I’m satisfied we’ve found as many as we’re going to find. More info on these at / discord .
In addition to the above, I also used the following plugins to render this video:
- XBLA weapons, scenery, and landscapes from a slightly edited version of simplici7y.com...
- ML Super Res Monsters Infinity: simplici7y.com... (I know these look weird with the BRUTAL MARATHON exclusives being less smooth, but oh well)
- Basic HUD: simplici7y.com...
- The Marathon 2 Special Edition soundtrack: cdn.discordapp.... Aleph One 1.6.1, for the first time, can play FLAC soundtracks, so I revised the scripts; see aaronfreed.git... for the new ones. (I actually have this functionality embedded in the above Lua mega-script, but who’s counting.)
- A physics model that makes mild cosmetic changes that don’t affect film sync (e.g., flame cyborgs use different palettes; a few projectiles have added flyby sounds).
Regarding Nuke & Pave: Fun level. I think I used only fists against enemies. I wound up firing a few shots to make certain jumps easier to make. I can’t remember how you’re supposed to hit the switch that opens up the end of the level, or if you’re even supposed to be able to punch it, but I couldn’t figure it out, so I just tabbed it.
There’s one secret area that’s unfortunately impossible to show in a vid film, since it requires grenade jumping, and this level has no assault rifle. (I’m… not fond of secrets that require grenade jumps and try to avoid such secrets in my own maps nowadays.)
I’ve vidded a few other Marathon 1 and 2 levels recently and will probably post films of them soon™.

[@Gabiscis]

so happy this game is still alive and well with an active modding scene!

[@Stefan-br2cf]

Where to geht those music Tracks?

[@MarathonVidmaster]

there’s a link in the video description (which also contains instructions for how to use them in-game)